Category Archives: Random Blogging

Indiana’s Hangover

Well, we’ve had our “party”–yesterday was Primary Election day.

Today, we have to live with the hangover.

The most troubling result, of course, was the defeat of Dick Lugar by an embarrassing know-nothing unworthy to polish his shoes. I have posted several times about the pathetic campaign run by a once-towering statesman. Truth be told, Lugar has moved steadily to the right as the party’s base has migrated to the fringes, and a dignified retirement might have rescued his legacy. That said, to see a man of genuine stature defeated by a cartoon was hard to take.

Add to that ignominious defeat the victories of equally noxious GOP congressional candidates in safe districts–districts where the Primary is for all intents and purposes THE election–and Indianapolis and Indiana can kiss all of the good PR we generated from the SuperBowl good-by. By our dingbats we shall be known….

The open question is: what will Hoosiers do in November? Will we confirm our status as a buckle on the Bible Belt, electing Mike Pence (who, in his years in Congress, never managed to pass a single bill, but spent LOTS of time talking about what God wanted) and Tea Partier Richard Mourdock? Or will we come to our senses?

The Democrats running for Governor and Senator are, by national standards, conservative. (As my youngest son says about the Gregg-Pence matchup, we have a choice: we can go back to the 1950s or the 1590s.) Joe Donnelly is a “blue dog.” Neither will satisfy true progressives. But both are good people, savvy and compassionate and vastly preferable to Pence and Mourdock.

To all my Republican friends who voted for Dick Lugar, and all my Democratic friends who swallowed hard, took a GOP Primary ballot and did likewise, let me echo the Facebook message posted this morning by a friend from Lafayette: Our job is to ensure that there is NEVER a Senator Mourdock. To which I’ll add: or a Governor Pence.

The last thing we need is “hair of the dog.”

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I Guess I Pissed Him Off….

A couple of years ago, after receiving a particularly nasty (unsigned) letter presumably triggered by one of my columns in the Indianapolis Star, I posted a rebuttal of sorts. In it, I noted my frustration with people who respond to ideas with which they disagree by calling names rather than specifying the nature of the disagreement.

Today, I received the following message from the IPhone of one Steve Hunsicker:

It’s a crime to think people like you are at our university’s teaching. Look in the mirror, it’s professors like yourself that are dangerous to our kids.

I have no idea what set this person off. Since the email came to me through the IBJ, I assume he found my most recent column for that publication objectionable; of course, from the message, it is impossible to know what he disagreed with or why.

This is the sort of behavior that baffles and depresses me. I understand disagreeing with someone’s opinion. I understand getting angry about it. What I don’t understand is firing off an insult rather than initiating a conversation–or even an argument–about the substance of the disagreement.

When I read or hear something I find ridiculous, mendacious or just plain wrong, I consider the source. If the author is someone who seems amenable to reason, I may engage that person through correspondence or conversation. If, however, the author of the statement is one of the ideologues or yahoos that increasingly populate our political universe, I turn off the television or leave the website. It would never occur to me to respond with an ad hominem attack–why bother? What possible good would it do? And who has the time to tilt at the ever-proliferating windmills?

I guess that’s what I find so puzzling. What did Mr. Hunsicker think he was accomplishing? Did he think a hateful message bereft of any substance would make me reconsider my policy positions?  I have much the same question about all those people who spend hours posting angry, incoherent diatribes on newspaper websites. (Where do they get the time?? Don’t they have lives? Maybe not.)

Oh, well. As Kingsley Amis once said,  “If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.”

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Voting on the Word of God

My husband and I attended a “Straight for Equality” event sponsored by PFLAG yesterday. PFLAG–for those who don’t know the acronym–stands for Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays; the organization has 350+ chapters in the US and abroad.  “Straight for Equality” is an advocacy campaign the national organization has just launched.

The President of the national board this year is one Rabbi Horowitz, who actually was the assistant Rabbi at Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation back in the 1970s. He was an entertaining speaker, if a bit long-winded (a common “clerical error”). As he made his pitch for taking the “Straight for Equality” campaign into faith communities, he said something that struck me as both totally new and–upon reflection–self-evidently true.

He said the word of God is subject to vote.

Think about it: The way congregations read their holy books is inescapably influenced by the culture the congregants inhabit. It wasn’t so long ago that most Christian denominations read the bible to require racial segregation and the subordination of women. Some still do, but the vast majority no longer interpret the text in that way. The culture changed, and so did religious people’s understanding of God’s commandments.

When I was researching God and Country, my book about the unrecognized religious roots of contemporary policy preferences, I quickly recognized that even our most fundamentalist contemporary Christians, those who insist the bible is the literal word of God and thus unchanging (God presumably also handled the various translations), hold beliefs that would be shocking heresies to fundamentalists who lived 100 years ago.

We are all creatures of our times. We share the sensibilities of our cultures no matter how stubbornly we resist, and we bring those sensibilities to our interpretations of religious texts.

When enough members of a congregation recognize both the humanity of gay people and the justice of their claim to equality, those members’ attitudes–their “votes”– change doctrine. We’ve seen plenty of examples, as one denomination after another reinterprets rules that previously kept gays from being ordained or married. That process will inevitably continue, no matter how hysterically some try to fight it.

I had always thought of this as the process of social change. The Rabbi calls it “voting on God’s word.”

However we think about it, it reflects the reality that we humans create gods in our own image–which is a good reason to get serious about self-improvement.

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Must…Hang On…Almost Tuesday….

I can’t imagine what life is like for people who don’t have TIVO. Our live TV watching is limited to the evening news–we can skip commercials otherwise–and we are drowning in negative, content-free bilge. Not to mention the colorful fliers in the daily mail–you know the ones I’m referring to: Candidate A would let women who’d been raped abort, and thus is not really pro-life. Candidate X cheated on taxes; Candidate Y isn’t really a Hoosier; Candidate Z once talked to a Democrat and is clearly unfit for office.

There aren’t any Democratic primaries in my district, or the number would undoubtedly be greater.

A few years ago, I told my husband that I was long past voting for someone I actually liked, and even past voting for the lesser of two evils. Henceforth, I would be voting for the people who pander to the people who seem less dangerous.

If my television, email and snail mail are any indication, this crop of candidates is pandering to people they believe to be incredibly stupid, rigidly ideological sexist bigots.

I have yet to view or receive a campaign ad suggesting that issues are complex and well-intentioned people may disagree about them. I have yet to see one defending the belief– deeply rooted in our Constitution and especially the First Amendment–that diversity, especially diversity of opinion, is necessary to the achievement of sound ideas. I am still looking for the ad that respects the candidate’s opponent or the intelligence of the recipient, or one that actually discusses an issue rather than labeling and dismissing it.

I don’t know whether this intensely disagreeable political season says more about the integrity-free candidates willing to indulge in this bile, or the voters who actually respond to it.

I do know, I will be very happy on Wednesday. At least until September…..

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